2014 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship
Winners Announced
$129,000 in prizes awarded to five young poets
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine
are pleased to announce the five recipients of the 2014 Ruth Lilly and
Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships: Hannah Gamble, Solmaz
Sharif, Danez
Smith, Ocean Vuong and Wendy Xu. Among the largest awards offered to
aspiring poets in the United States, the $25,800 scholarship prize is
intended to encourage the further study and writing of poetry and is
open to all U.S. poets between 21 and 31 years of
age.
“Each
of this year’s winners is a poet whose work engages with the events
that unfold before us every day,” said Don Share, editor of
Poetry magazine, announcing the 2014 winners. “Their work
resounds both on and off the page, and refreshes, as well as fulfills,
the dictum that literature is news that stays news.”
Established
in 1989 by Ruth Lilly to encourage the further writing and study of
poetry, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship program has dramatically
expanded since its inception. Until 1995, university writing programs
nationwide each nominated one student poet for a single fellowship; from
1996 until 2007, two fellowships were awarded. In 2008 the competition
was opened to all U.S. poets between 21 and
31 years of age, and the number of fellowships increased to five,
totaling $75,000. In 2013, the Poetry Foundation received
a generous gift
from the Dorothy
Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund to create the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy
Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, which increased the fellowship
amount from $15,000 to $25,800.
“This
is a phenomenal group of young poets,” said Poetry Foundation President
Robert Polito. “Their aesthetics and concerns are various, but each is
singularly gifted.
I’m reminded of Emerson’s sparkling words to Whitman—‘I greet you at
the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long
foreground somewhere, for such a start.’”
***
Danez Smith is the author of [insert] Boy
(YesYes Books, forthcoming) and the chapbook hands on ya knees (Penmanship
Books, 2013). Smith is the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight
Foundation, Cave Canem, VONA (Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation) and
elsewhere. He is a founding member
of the multigenre, multicultural Dark Noise Collective. His writing has
appeared in
Poetry, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kinfolks and
elsewhere. In poetry slam, he is a 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam
finalist and the reigning two-time Rustbelt Individual Champion, and was
on the 2014 championship team Sad Boy Supper Club.
He was the festival director for the Brave New Voices International
Youth Poetry Slam in 2014. He holds a BA from the University of
Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a First Wave Urban Arts Scholar, and was
born in St. Paul, Minn.
Comment by email:
Thank you for posting and sending this! Danez Smith
